A Bias to Action: A Summary of The Achievement Habit

The Achievement Habit is written by Bernard Roth, an engineering professor and co-founder of Stanford’s D School. The book is a half biography, half self help book that uses the concepts of design thinking, awareness, and a bias to action to help you shape your life.

Here are my key take-aways from the book:

Live with a bias towards action

Doing is better than not doing.

When you have the choice to think about doing something, vs, doing something, you typically want to do it.

Most great things in life are accomplished by simply getting started. Put pen to paper, write a few lines of code, stretch the canvas, move your feet and you are already 90% there.

Design thinking

Much of the book is spent discussing the design thinking framework which he co-created at Stanford’s D school. Design thinking makes sure that you are solving the *right* problem. Here it is.

Empathize, ideate, prototype, test, iterate